Louis Trimble's Stab in the Dark is one half of an Ace double novel, the other half of which—Jonathan Gant's Never Say No to a Killer—we powered through in one day back during the fall of 2017. Ordinarily when you finish one of these doubles you start right in on the back side, but you know how easily distracted we are. We finally got around to Stab, though, and it pits a secret agent against a group of blackmailers in possession of dirty photos of important people. Sounds fun, doesn't it? But there's nothing special here. We assume Trimble did better work elsewhere. 1956 on this, with unattributed cover art. 

Above, a nice cover for Day Keene's 1954 thriller Death House Doll, with excellent art credited to Bernard Barton, who's aka Harry Barton (Bernard was his middle name). In the story, a Korean War vet has promised his fatally wounded brother he'd look after his wife and baby daughter, but when he gets back to the world (Chicago) he's stunned to find that she's sitting on death row for murder, and unwilling to spill the truth even if it saves her. The attraction with this one is watching a decorated war hero run riot on hoods and thieves, while up against the always effective ticking clock gimmick—an execution date, which in this case is five days hence. The book was an Ace Double with Thomas B. Dewey's Mourning After on the flipside, and the art on that one, just above, is by Victor Olson. We put together a nice collection of Harry Barton's work back in May that we recommend you visit at this link. 

Above, an Ace double consisting of John Creighton's Trial by Perjury and Louis Trimble's The Smell of Trouble. Cover art is by uncredited and his twin brother unattributed. You can see another Ace double here. 

A gringo detective with an agency in Mexico City is hired to locate his crooked ex-partner, who has bailed with the agency's money, and now is causing trouble for the client. The PI takes the job, glad to be paid to track down his betrayer, and starts in the Mexican town of Rio Bravo where the partner immediately turns up dead. From there the hero delves into local corruption, crosses the border to Texas, uncovers a human trafficking ring, meets a cantina dancer named Arden Kennett, deals with a dangerous wife, watches murders pile up and the police begin to suspect him, and learns that knives can be thrown just as effectively as they can be brandished.

The book was published in the U.S. as an Ace Double in 1959 with Paul Rader art and bound with Charles Fritch's Negative of a Nude, but the rare edition above is from Aussie imprint Phantom Books and appeared in 1960. We can't identify the artist, which is an affliction we've been dealing with quite a bit of late. But don't blame us—as we've mentioned once or twice before, including just a few days ago, Phantom didn't credit art, possibly because much of it was copied from U.S. editions. Many of the covers do, however, look like the same hand, so hopefully someone will be able to ID the owner of that hand at some point in the future.

Actually, this book has nothing to do with cousins, but the art spoke to us that way. Guess we've read too many Midwood sleaze novels. Ace Books is generally a bit more highbrow. The main character in 1957's Desire in the Ozarks is Shoog Dawkins, a happy-go-lucky hillbilly stereotype who, after some years of matrimony to his sweetheart Docey and the birth of a son, has his head turned by a girl named Genevy Trone. He's constitutionally unable to resist the basic pleasures of life, so trouble soon results. This was marketed as an authentic slice of rural life in the vein of Erskine Caldwell—unsuccessfully it seems, because though Steger authored numerous short stories, this seems to have been his/her only novel. Turning to the art, it's uncredited. We did a little digging and found that the original painting for this recently went up for auction and the sellers confirmed that it's unsigned. We figure if they can't identify the artist, nobody can, so this one will likely remain unattributed.  

Give a girl a whip and you'll find out who's the boss. Luisita is about a Mexican girl living in nowheresville whose beauty brings her both opportunities and problems. After a run of bad luck in her home town she moves to Los Angeles and eventually lands a job in a massage parlor. There she learns how depraved men really are, but also how easy they are to manipulate, and of course she uses to this new knowledge to try and get herself a piece of the pie. Basically, it's one of those books that's supposed to expose a shocking subculture, but it has the added bonus of pretending to offer insights about an entire ethnic group. However, the racism subplots are probably accurate. Loomis later went on to write House of Deceit and The Marina Street Girls. The excellent art on this is by Robert Maguire and the copyright is 1954. 

Kathleen Sully's Canal in Moonlight was titled Bikka Road in the U.S., and concerns a happy family of eighteen. Well, they're happy when the book starts. And they're soon to be nineteen, as the wife is pregnant yet again. But she dies in childbirth, a daughter whose beauty is garnering the attention of men disappears, a couple of major purchases go wrong, a revenge scheme is enacted against the man thought to have wronged the family, etc., and pretty soon nobody is happy anymore. This is pure literature rather than a pulp style novel, but we couldn't resist the cover art. It's by John Vernon, who painted numerous fronts for Ace Books during the 1950s. This nice effort is from 1957.